Alex Aldridge asks whether online networking sites and blogs can be viable career-forwarding tools for the law community

There is a tendency to talk up the career benefits of online social networking. In this parallel universe, anyone serious about getting on in life has hundreds of career-enhancing Facebook contacts who they regale daily with tales from their carefully-tended blogs. This, supposedly, generates waves of business opportunities, coupled with many wonderful nights out, as boundaries between business and pleasure blur. The tech-savvy associate then completes their triumphant march to partnership with an ease unimaginable in the pre-internet age.

This doesn't actually happen, right? While lawyers have been among the most enthusiastic social users of online networking – as illustrated by Allen & Overy's much-mocked ban in 2007 on staff using Facebook – it remains a rarity for the profession to use such tools to further their career.

Nicola Hopkins, one of the youngest lawyers in the last decade to have made partner at magic circle law firm Linklaters, is not a believer in online social networking. "My career has not been helped by any social networking site and I do not read legal blogs," she says.

Nor is Craig Tevendale, a recently-made up partner in Herbert Smith's dispute resolution team: "I'm sceptical about social networking sites for lawyers. We work in a conservative field. Frankly, anything personal is at risk of being viewed as inappropriate, whether or not it relates to work."

Needless to say, neither of these lawyers has their own blog. In fact, hardly any City lawyers have their own blog. A trawl through Delia Venables' UK legal blog directory unearths only two. One, Anonymous Assistant, is an anonymously written fictional account of the life of 'junior litigation lawyer Helen Bailey' and, as such, can hardly be classified as a business generation tool. The other, 'Corporate Blawg', was last updated in July 2007.

Then there are the law firm blogs: Freeth Cartwright's 'IMPACT', Simmons & Simmons' legal blog and Watson Farley & Williams' trainee blog are examples. Some are better than others – the worst being just a collection of pdf documents posted online. But isn't this just a form of marketing? And wouldn't the efforts of lawyers involved in this sort of thing be better directed towards actually writing articles for independent publications?

"It sounds incredibly worthy and dull, but the value of online publicity lies in promoting articles in established journals and magazines," says Tevendale.

Still, however over-hyped the internet's networking potential, it feels counter-intuitive to dismiss it completely. Established partners often tell stories of contacts they made in their junior days that have led to long-term and fruitful client relationships. So it seems reasonable to predict that today's assistants who are members of online networking sites, will, one day, find themselves with more useful client contacts than colleagues who are not active in this area.

Charles Brasted, an associate in Lovells' public law team, believes that the value of Facebook and LinkedIn are limited ("and no substitute for getting out, meeting people and building real relationships"), but accepts that such sites can be useful to lawyers.

Blogs don't offer the same straightforward possibilities of keeping in touch with people. Indeed, they are seen by many as a bit embarrassing – something you do if you have got too much time on your hands. However, the huge success of sites such as Roll on Friday, the City law gossip website, and the US's self-styled 'legal tabloid' Above the Law – sites that due to their popularity have morphed into proper websites – show that lawyers are not inherently averse to the format. And the popular message boards and reader comment sections on these sites demonstrate that lawyers are communicating with each other through them.

Indeed, the US legal blogging community is a fascinating case study in itself, having grown up in the wake of the controversial lawyer message boards Greedy Associates. So influential did the irreverent site come as a means for junior lawyers to pass around information that they were regarded as playing a key role in the pay wars of 1999 and 2000, as news of tit-for-tat pay rises among US law firms raced around the web.

Above the Law founder David Lat believes that the message boards and comment sections on his and other similar sites have helped to create online communities, where information can be shared between private practice and in-house lawyers and real life networks forged (see box). Above the Law recently held a 'happy hour' event in a bar in New York where over a hundred readers got together.

The challenge that sites such as Above the Law and Roll on Friday can face is that, as their popularity grows, the sense of community they engender can come under threat. How much affiliation do posters really feel with each other when they are one of many thousands of daily readers? And even when you meet each other face to face, how easy is it to hit it off when all you have got in common is that you are readers of an extremely well-known website?

Potentially more rewarding in career networking terms is a good quality legal blog which is not too well-known, with a following that is small enough to represent a genuine community where meaningful connections can be forged.

Sarah Wright (pictured), a partner in her mid-30s who specialises in intellectual property (IP) at Olswang, proclaims herself "not a big fan of social networking sites". She is, however, an "avid reader" of a blog called IPKat, which she describes as "a forum for IP practitioners to share info and ask each other questions".

Started by professor Jeremy Phillips, an academic specialising in IP law, as a supplement to the reading lists he used to give out to students on the Queen Mary University LLM, IPKat has evolved into a successful specialist IP website with a following throughout the sector.

"Students kept deleting the emails I sent out and then asking me for further copies. It drove me mad, so I decided to start a blog to put all this information online. In a very short time I got lawyers and people in the industry calling me up, saying, 'where did you get this?' or 'you've got this wrong', asking questions on things they didn't know about, even whistle-blowing from within organisations," says Phillips.

Regular events, such as the recent Annual Intellectual Property Publishers' and Editors' Lunch, which took place in December, are now organised through the blog.

"The blog has been great for getting people together and these events obviously consolidate connections made online," adds Phillips.

So how do you steer a course through the dross and find a good legal blog?

"Many of the top US bloggers are legal professors doing this because they want to raise their academic profile or, in many cases, simply because they enjoy it," says Lat. "So blogs of that nature are a good starting point."

And if you still can't find anything worth bothering with?

"The cost of maintaining a blog is low," he adds, "so be patient: new ones – both good and bad – will continue to appear."

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Online opportunities – David Lat, founder of Above the Law

It's common for lawyers not to know what they really want to do. I practised at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz for two-and-a-half years, then found I wanted to write.

Still, I've hung on to my law licence. I enjoyed being a lawyer and still sometimes help out with legal issues relating to the blog.

Above the Law is more irreverent than its competitors – and more micro. The American Lawyer has higher standards of newsworthiness; we cover every bonus story.

Sites like ours empower young lawyers. Stealth lay-offs used to creep under the radar. Not anymore.

It can be hard for bloggers to get heard above the din. But the costs are so low that the medium will continue to thrive.